Josh Sawyer did his Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Q&A stream last night, at the end of which he announced that the game's backer beta would be released tomorrow - that is, today. Obsidian issued keys to eligible backers a few hours ago and formally announced the release in a new Fig update shortly afterwards. Here's the update's accompanying video, featuring Josh Sawyer and Katrina Garsten, plus a special video Josh put together for today's simultaneous release of the Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition (now available on Steam and GOG, and don't forget to grab the free Deadfire Pack DLC).

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Naturally, yesterday's Q&A session included many interesting questions about the beta. The following gameplay stream by Twitch personality Ellohime ended up lasting over eight hours (including two hours spent entirely in character creation). Once again, a transcript of the Q&A has been prepared by the indispensable Fereed from Reddit. Here are the archived videos of both streams:

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Our users who are playing the Deadfire beta have mostly good things to report. It's in much better shape than the first game's beta was. Although Obsidian seem to be longer committing to a release in March, perhaps the final game isn't far off. More information about the beta is available here.